Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to promotions and coupons, and more particularly to electronic promotions.
Discussion of the Related Art
Conventionally, various systems have existed for providing coupons and promotions both in an offline environment and in an electronic environment.
A conventional coupon is a loss leading type of sale, promotion, or discount offer enticing customers to purchase a good, or service. A coupon normally has an expiration date within which redemption or fulfillment is due. Coupons were originally distributed by mail and as advertising promotions with newspaper and magazine print media.
More recently, coupons and other such promotions have become more targeted using such technologies as demographic and psychographic analysis of potential customers by marketers or promoters. Indeed a large proportion of conventional postal delivery junk mail includes targeted promotions such as, e.g., but not limited to, discounts, product coupons, trial offers, credit card applications, political solicitations, etc. With the development of intelligent point of sale (POS) systems from companies like NCR and IBM, highly targeted coupons became available at POS.
Online systems of advertising and promotion have matured from early banner ads, to ever more sophisticated ad serving systems, providing tailored, targeted advertising and promotions to interactive internet browser based user interfaces.
The growth of the global Internet has accelerated ad serving based on per click models among others. With the advent of ubiquitous mobile networks and social networks today reaching a critical mass of consumers, additional novel promotional offerings have been developed directed at networked users.
Online communities began with bulletin board systems (BBSs) in the 1980s. Social networks began to develop in the mid-1990s with increasing popularity of the world wide web (WWW). Early social networks included Friendster, followed by MySpace, LinkedIn, Yahoo! 360, XING, etc. Perhaps the most successful social network to date is Facebook, whose reach spans continents and generations. Social networks allow users, e.g., to create profile pages containing information about user members are willing share about themselves with others, and allow the user members to create lists of contacts or friends, which may be granted access to content links or posts of the given user member.
Marketers have strived to use the power of social media to promote products. Daily deal sites provide customer users an opportunity to peruse, for example, a periodic communication message, with an offer that includes various restrictions and an expiration date.
Groupon.com available from Groupon, Inc. of Chicago, Ill. USA, is a subscription service offering a daily deal communication to customer users that may start at a deep percent discount. Groupon guarantees a business owner a minimum return. After the Groupon customer receives the daily email with a deal offering thread, the customer may select to purchase the product, and then enters the customer's credit card information. Thus the customer agrees to pay up front, and if the offer is closed, then revenue from the sale is split between Groupon and the business owner providing the product or service. A Groupon deal has a single countdown for how long the deal is available for purchase. For example, Groupon requires a minimum dollar amount of sales, or the deal is off. For example, until at least a vendor selectable amount of people sign up for the offer (e.g., 30) no one can redeem, but once the amount is reached, the deal is said to “tip,” and then the discount is “on.” Once tipped, the offer is automatically purchased using the customer's credit card information, and a coupon voucher may be issued having a redemption or fulfillment date. For the customer to redeem a coupon, a redemption code may be printed, or a barcode may be displayed on, e.g., a smartphone, allowing redemption or fulfillment similar to conventional coupons.
LivingSocial.com available from LivingSocial, Inc. of Washington, D.C., USA provides another daily deal offering, which sends a discounted offering email to customers in a given locality. Offerings of a vendor, for example, restaurants, spas, shops, travel, etc. are offered to customers by LivingSocial via, e.g., an email communication. The customer can choose and buy an offering. The customer may subscribe to areas of interest. Then the LivingSocial customer can share his or her purchase with friends of the customer's social network; for example, the customer can send an alert or notification to some or all of the customer's friends by, e.g., a Tweet to Twitter, a post to Facebook, or by sending a unique link to friends in an email. Using LivingSocial, if e.g., three people buy the customer's deal with the link provided by the customer, then the deal may be made free to that original customer.
Conventional couponing methods and systems have various shortcomings. What is needed is an improved system that overcomes the various shortcomings of conventional solutions.